Today's dispatch hails from the sandy banks of the Ohio River in the Derby City, baby! Looking to drink bourbon, gamble on ponies, and not pass out at 3:30 a.m. in a bar that's open 'til 4 for some reason.
Any Cardinal or Wildcat fans are free to meet me outside the KFC Yum! Center this afternoon for an ass kicking. (That includes you too, Rick Pitino! A video of a weeping, purple-faced Pitino hollering "Uncle!" would do over a million views.)
I'll be the transient-lookin' fella in full Buckeye regalia dual-wielding bottles of cheap Everclear with a freaked Black & Mild dangling from my lips.
Until then, let's watch Billy Price bulldoze a Michigan Man.
From NFL.com's Lance Zierlein (turn sound on for analysis):
Billy Price's leverage game. pic.twitter.com/aIFtA1uKdp
— Lance Zierlein (@LanceZierlein) June 30, 2017
ICYMI:
- Derek Funderburk and Braxton Beverly both out of Ohio State.
- Mapping Ohio State' 2017 wide receiver rotation.
- Introducing the Eleven Warriors Palmer Cup.
- This year marks the 10th anniversary of the wild 2007 season.
- Two famous Ohio State fans from the 2015 Sugar Bowl help us understand a great fan experience.
- Help put a life-size statue of Woody Hayes in his hometown of Newcomerstown, Ohio.
Word of the Day: Cairn.
MEET THE INTERNS. All elite football programs preach the importance of academics in recruiting. For some schools, though, talk is all it ever amounts to.
Not at Ohio State, where Urban Meyer has spearheaded "Real Life Wednesdays," a program which has turned into a massive tool on the recruiting trail.
On top of that, Meyer's program works with corporations and institutions to land career-defining institutions for the leaders of his team.
From Urban Meyer's Twitter account, Chris Worley shooting the Memorial Tournament with 10TV:
Chris Worley at 10TV.
Billy Price and the world's smallest couch:
Billy Price at Mast Global.
Looks like Tyquan Lewis plans to terrorize criminals when he retires from terrorizing quarterbacks:
Tyquan Lewis at the FBI.
Meet future Nike CEO Terry McLaurin, who's coaching at the The Opening Finals in Beaverton, Oregon:
Terry McLaurin at Nike
Stuff like this won't get the #clicks compared to an article on Dublin police apprehending two rogue pissers, but they help keep the hot #take artists from putting Ohio State football into their trash articles. So that's nice.
THE MILLENNIAL QUESTION. If some Baby Boomers had their way, America would only use Millennials to harvest their blood.
Michigan State coach Mike D'antoni Mark Dantonio doesn't have that option, for at least a few more years. He needs that Millennial life-force to pad his bank account with an extra ~4.3 million dollars this fall.
Thankfully for Spartan fans, Dantonio understands an entire generation now thanks to a 15 minute video he saw on the internet.
From footballscoop.com:
Earlier this year, I was sitting in on a speaking session featuring Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio. If memory serves me right, it was at the AFCA convention in Nashville where he was on a panel of coaches talking about discipline, or perhaps it was at the annual Michigan HS Coaches association convention.
In either instance, I distinctly remember him saying that everyone who works with millennials (widely defined as people born in 1984 or after) needs to Google “Millennial video” and watch it. I remember jotting it down at the time, along with a number of other things he said, with the intention of tracking down that video later. I knew I had seen the video Dantonio was referring to before, and noted that it was a message that should be shared with all coaches, since we’re all working with (and some of us are members of) the millennial generation.
With out further ado, the video in question:
I would like to thank this guy for giving me an excuse next time Whitney chastises me for checking Slack while at dinner.
Baby, blogging about the local team is an addiction, which is a synonym for disease. You wouldn't tut tut somebody for taking cancer medications at the dinner table, right? Exactly.
BOILER UP? Don't look now, but Purdue is on the ascension in that it convinced a Western Kentucky coach a move to West Lafayette would be a promotion.
Enter former XFL quarterback Jeff Brohm, who inherits the smoking remains of the Darrell Hazell era.
From Bill Connelly of sbnation.com:
Brohm doesn’t inherit a senior-heavy squad. That’s a plus. Granted, seniors could make up about half of the defense, but the odds are good that whoever emerges will return in 2018.
This might not be a full-fledged Year Zero situation, in which the smartest thing to do is strip the house to the studs and start over. Brohm might be able to get mileage out of Blough and some new skill guys, and maybe there’s enough in the defensive front seven to keep the Boilers in games.
Still, the schedule doesn’t include many likely wins, even for a slightly improved team. The Boilermakers will probably beat Ohio and could hope to split tossup games against Rutgers and Illinois and maybe steal an upset against a Missouri or Minnesota or Nebraska or Indiana. But 2017 will be mostly about planting seeds.
I would say it'd be hilarious to see the Boilermakers raise hell in the West, but I still haven't recovered from that hangover I suffered on Iuka Avenue in October 2009 while watching Terrelle Pryor turn the ball over five times in West Lafayette. I hope they lose every game this year.
HOLTMANN CLEANING HOUSE? Not even a month on the job and new Ohio State basketball coach Chris Holtmann has already signed one new player and seen two of Thad Matta's recruits leave town.
It seems like he's pretty efficiently getting his guys in and the old guys out, which is exactly how Holtmann does it, claims Max Landis, Holtmann's first-ever recruit.
This roster turnover reminded me of what Gardner-Webb guard Max Landis (Chris Holtmann's first-ever recruit) told me about his former coach. pic.twitter.com/NhXb8DSNBC
— Colin Hass-Hill (@chasshill) June 30, 2017
Holtmann's not going to have to wait long to fill his team with his own recruits. After next season, he'll have seven open scholarships to fill however his heart desires.
BOUT DAMN TIME. Breaking news: The NCAA is considering doing something humane and just for the student-athletes it claims to look out for.
From vice.com (via 11W member Hetuck):
When it comes to college athlete transfers, the National Collegiate Athletic Association may be on the cusp of—finally—doing something right. Earlier this week, the Division I Council Transfer Working Group announced that it's considering altering current rules that limit the ability of players to move from one school to another. The most notable rules up for consideration include those:
- Requiring athletes to get permission from their current schools to speak with other schools;
- Barring those athletes from receiving a scholarship from their new school without first getting said permission.
Changes to both rules—and by changes, I mean scrapping them completely—are long overdue. As is, they are arbitrary, capricious, and philosophically absurd, giving coaches and athletic departments undue, unearned power over unpaid students seeking a better situation elsewhere.
Shame it will come to late to help Antwuan Jackson this cycle, though.
THOSE WMDs. 10-year-old's penpal: General Manuel Noriega... Netflix now helping cops solve cold cases... The man who spent 35 years in prison without trial... The cryptocurrency prophet.
